Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to lend my strong support to the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2014, which will provide additional funding to schools participating in the Indigenous Boarding Initiative, maintain funding levels for special purpose schools and correct certain errors and omissions in the initial drafting of the Australian Education Act 2013.

This government understands that access to education is the cornerstone of each child's future. Every child has a different vision for what their life will be and a different set of skills, but it is so important that each and every child is given the start that they deserve at a central point of equal access to primary and secondary education.

The Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council's first aim is to improve school attendance and educational attainment. It was agreed in their meeting of February this year that engagement with schooling was a main early focus of the council.

Living in remote or very remote communities comes with many challenges, including geographical barriers to school attendance and a pattern of poverty. A report by the Australian National Audit Office found:

Limited access to schools is recognised as a primary driver of Indigenous disadvantage in education affecting student attendance, retention rates and academic performance.

During the Prime Minister's recent visit to north-eastern Arnhem Land, the Indigenous Advisory Council met for the fourth time and received a briefing on the Empowered Communities initiative. A key belief of the initiative is that social norms must be established and insisted upon if cycles of impoverishment and disadvantage are to be broken.

One of the first and most emphasised social norms was the imperative nature of school attendance and engagement in training and work. If the key to solving Indigenous disadvantage is access to these opportunities, the government and its allies in Indigenous advancement must be steadfast in delivering Indigenous Australians the very best of training and educational institutions, and persisting with creating these new patterns of engagement. Truancy officers are doing vital work in this area, as the Prime Minister has consistently recognised. But an alternative and complementary initiative is that of boarding in metropolitan areas. The Indigenous boarding initiative is all about creating new cycles and new patterns to really make a difference to Indigenous disadvantage.

This bill will fund $6.8 million on top of already allocated funds to eligible schools with over 50 Indigenous borders or to schools where 50 per cent or more of the school's borders are Indigenous students from remote or very remote backgrounds. This initiative will allow additional recruitment funding in 2014 to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander boarding students at non-government schools. This initiative, which has been legislated into the act as a component of 2014-15 budget, is just one of the measures as part of our Economic Action Strategy to ensure a brighter future for all Australians. The key theme of the action strategy, in partnership with the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, is access to opportunity. Equal opportunity has always been a key coalition value, and is well understood to be the driver for a better life. The coalition believes that lives are transformed by high-quality education. Our society speaks a lot about the cycle of disadvantage. But great educational opportunities produce a new cycle of inspiration, where students who have received the opportunity to have a go and unlock a world of knowledge go on to inspire others from similar backgrounds to do the same.

Last year, almost 3,000 Indigenous students were enrolled as borders in great schools all around the country. The government is passionate about the best and brightest schools in Australia partnering with Indigenous students in order to grant them the opportunities that they deserve. Some non-government schools, such as The King's School, Parramatta, and Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, have had enormous success in their provision of boarding places to Indigenous students. The government has considered special-purpose boarding facilities and enrolment into boarding initiatives as important contributors to fulfilling key Close the Gap objectives, which were agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments in the National Partnership Agreement of 2008. These objectives centre on resolving the disparity in numeracy and literacy outcomes as well as significant gaps in year 12 graduation rates of Indigenous students.

The work that Mr Warren Mundine has done as chair of the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation and as part of the Prime Minister's Indigenous Advisory Council has delivered a clear vision in the government's direction for educational advancement. When discussing the resolution to the cycle of Indigenous disadvantage, Mr Mundine said:

… the solution is not a mystery. If marginalised Indigenous children have access to some of Australia’s best educational opportunities and receive the support they need to pursue meaningful careers then they will enjoy the same quality of life as other Australians with access to these same opportunities.

Similarly, respected advocate for Indigenous a dvancement Marcia Langton AM has been quoted as saying that the key to a successful education is :

… discipline, constant attendance, learning element by element and putting together the system of literacy, the sounds and associations between the symbol and the sound. And all those things have to be built up consistently and according to a curriculum, brick by brick, in a classroom.

One effective way to ensure discipline and constant attendance is to provide Indigenous students with an immersive experience that a world-class boarding experience can ensure. A no-distractions approach , which allows students to be absorbed in their studies and extra-curricular activities , has been found to improve retention rates and form a genuine pathway to further study at a tertiary level. However, the unique challenges that accompany a fundamental shift in environment — from a remote or very remote area, from an Indigenous to a non- Indigenous setting— must , in some cases , be addressed with additional support. This support may be used to equip schools with appropriate tuition and accommodation services for Indigenous support. That is the support which this b ill seeks to make possible by legislating our 2014 - 15 budget initiative.

The g overnment recognises the unique challenges which face Indigenous boarders when they leave their communities to enter a whole new environment. These challenges should not become barriers to opportunity, but , instead , our institutions must be equipped to tailor each educational experience to an individual student. Schools participating in the Indigenous a ction s trategy by making scholarships and boarding places available to Indigenous students have consistently indicated to the government that they require additional assistance in order to meet the additional needs of their Indigenous boarders. Schools with large numbers of Indigenous boarders have indicated that current levels of funding are inadequate to meet the costs of providing boarding and tuition to cater for the additional needs of these students . Accordingly, the g overnment has listened and is providing this amendment to the a ct.

The other significant measure of this bill is to amend the Australian Education Act to ensure that the level of funding for students with disabilities does not reduce in volume. Instead, the government will provide funding certainty by providing $2.4 million in funding for 2015 and ensure that funding for special or special - assistance schools will not automatically drop to the schooling resource standard. Funding will transition to this standard in a consistent manner until revised student - with - disability loadings are available, ensuring that schools which cater for students with a disability are not subject to funding cuts. As the member for Barton, this is particularly heartening. Just around the corner from my office is the St George School for Specific Purposes in Kogarah, where passionate teachers are expending every last resource available to them so that they can provide personalised learning plans to severely physically disabled children and strive for the best practice in special education. This g overnment is ensuring that schools like the St George s chool can continue to be at the cutting edge in meeting each student's special needs. The government is determined to ensure the integrity of the legislative framework for schools funding and the provision of additional levels of funding for Indigenous students or students with a disability.

This amendment can be seen as a natural part of our Students First plan, a vision for educational excellence in Australia of which the Minister for Education has been a passionate and effective advocate. The Students First initiative is all about improving teacher quality, increasing school autonomy, engaging parents in education and strengthening the curriculum. These goals for our education system as a whole can be related to the government's aims for Indigenous advancement.

When we employ great teachers with the skills to engage positively with their students and when they possess the persistence and the drive to encourage hard work in their students, they command respect and attention from each and every student in the classroom. When schools have autonomy, they can effectively tailor their programs to the student and parent bodies, and make sure that those closest to the situation and closest to the students have the strongest say. When parents are engaged in education, families can advance in opportunity together and entire communities can be engaged in better pathways. Finally, when we have a strong curriculum, students can be truly engaged in the comprehensive knowledge which is afforded them by a robust and evenly focused system of understanding.

The opportunity to board at a great school in a metropolitan area does not detract from the strong Indigenous identity that Australia's Indigenous students possess. In fact, when students gain a sense of themselves as competent, successful and worthy individuals, they gain an even stronger understanding of themselves in relation to their communities and their Indigenous identity. An alumna of Loreto Normanhurst in North Sydney, Sarah Treacy, said:

Going to boarding school helped me work harder, focus on my studies and take a genuine interest in myself doing well at school ... Along with this, I gained a stronger pride of being a young Aboriginal woman and I continue to take that pride, maturity and knowledge into my life today.

Considering the words of this bright young woman, a proud Indigenous Australian and a proud participant in the educational opportunities afforded to her, I am determined to be a supporter of this and all initiatives to improve access to opportunity for the next generation of Australians. I am certainly proud to be part of a government which believes in Indigenous empowerment and advancement. This bill will ensure that we have a strong legislative framework to achieve these aims.

With the knowledge that educational opportunity is the key to a brighter future, I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

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